Hello! I’m Santa Maribel Adon Santos, but everyone knows me as Dianny. Dominican, 24 years old, Graduate in Accounting from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) and currently working at the Instituto Politécnica Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, in Santiago de los Caballeros.
I started the experience of the Aspirancy with the Daughters of Jesus on January 7 of this year. For me this experience has been: getting out of myself, encounter, self-knowledge, joy, freedom, pain, fear, company, trust, dedication, hope …
Getting out of myself. I’ve always been a bit closed about giving myself a chance, but what I felt and what I am feeling sent me searching, and that’s why I’m here today. Living what I never imagined and falling in love with it little by little. It has been an encounter with a Jesus so human that he calls me with all my imperfections to follow him and collaborate in the construction of the Kingdom. Encounter with myself, that one that was lost trying to look for things that would make her find herself, that would fill her up; things outside, when in reality, everything was inside screaming to be heard.
In this experience I have been discovering things about me that I did not know, that I did not want to see or simply recognize, things that fill me with joy and peace, others not so much, but, they give me hope and make me trust knowing that from there Jesus also calls me. With this experience I feel that I am myself, I can recognize what is happening to me, I can be free to feel it, express it, and I feel that it is one of the greatest graces received.
This experience has also been about company, paths with others, my companions and sisters. It is knowing that from the struggle of each one, there is someone there who also goes with you, who accompanies you and welcomes you as you are. That from the silence, the smile, the hug, the arguments, the shared bread, the communal prayer, it is making me feel more at home every day, every day more in family.
Well, what else is there to say! I am in the process, I am living, I am making my way with Jesus, I continue to discover each time a Jesus very different from the one I knew, a Jesus who makes me fall in love, and whom I decide to follow today.
